Professional Voicemail Greetings for Businesses

Being in any kind of business demands professionalism – and using a VoIP service gets you one step closer to sound like Fortune 500 companies.

However, there are a few tricks to make your business seem even more professional; we already talked about business text messaging, so it’s time to introduce you to the other half of the equation: professional (voicemail) greetings.

Sounding Like a Pro

Rule No. 1 of business (and marketing for that matter): make a good, lasting first impression. Translated to the world of phone communication this means that if someone calls you and he/she is greeted by your auto-attendant, the redirecting/out-of-office message the caller hears must be polite, informative, inviting to leave a message, yet short (20–25 seconds tops). It should give out only the necessary info and devoid of clichés (phrases like “Your call is important to us”). More precisely, a voicemail greeting must contain:

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Hi, this is Lex Luthor. I can’t take your call right now, so leave me a message after the tone and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If you need immediate assistance, please call my secretary, Eve Tessmacher at extension 666. Thank you for calling.

Hello, you have reached the Sales Department. All of our sales representatives are busy at the moment, but we would like to return your call as soon as possible. Please leave your name and your phone number after the tone. Thank you and have a nice day.

Thank you for calling Best Reviews. If you know your party's extension, please enter it now or press 8 for the name directory. For Sales, press 1. For Support, press 2. Or press 0 for the next available representative.

The Options You Have

If you want your callers to be greeted by a professional voicemail greeting, you have two options. The first option is doing it for yourself by either typing in the message and get it read by a robot, recording the message via your cloud phone system’s account, or uploading a previously recorded wav/mp3 file. If you go with the latter, write down the message, which must be unique, upbeat, engaging and informative, practice it a lot and then record it with a natural tone and (hopefully) with a smile on your face.

GrasshopperiTeleCenterVirtualPBX & RingCentralPhone.comeVoice

Grasshopper's Voice Studio

The Voice Studio Feature in iTeleCenter

Voice Talents for VirtualPBX and RingCentral

Professional Recording in Phone.com

eVoice's Live Receptionists

The other, albeit pricy option is to have professionals record your voicemail. Many companies like Grasshopper, iTeleCenter, VirtualPBX, RingCentral and Phone.com have services in which voice talents will read your customized voicemail/auto-attendant greetings for prices starting from around $50, even with different accents in different languages. And there are extreme cases like eVoice through which you can hire live receptionists to sound the most authentic possible.